This disclosure is directed to automatic manipulation of information, particularly information with which a rights management hierarchy is associated, and more particularly where such rights management information is automatically readable from and/or writeable to hard-copy documents.
With the proliferation of electronic information systems, from small systems such as personal computers, personal digital assistants, and/or cellular telephones to sophisticated networks with multiple servers and potentially large numbers of users, there is an ever-increasing need for individual and/or networked system protection. Such protection takes on many forms. Among these are protection of the configuration and/or operating systems of such devices from intrusion, or from unauthorized or inadvertent modification. Additionally, methodologies are required to protect such devices from unauthorized use, and/or to secure data and/or images produced in, reproduced by, transferred through, transmitted by, or stored in the devices. Objectives of system protection schemes include protecting the integrity of an individual device, and/or system to which the device may be connected, and/or to protect data and/or images produced in, reproduced by, and/or stored in the device or system, thus securing user, and/or user organization, information from being freely accessible to those from whom an individual user or user organization may choose to restrict such information.
“Digital Rights Management” (DRM) refers broadly to schemes and methodologies for restricting access to information stored in electronic devices, particularly digital data and/or image producing and/or reproducing devices. Some scheme or methodology of rights management is enforced within the electronic device. DRM includes a concept as simple as individual password protection for access to data and/or functionalities available in a specific electronic device. In such cases, passwords are individually user-defined by an owner and/or primary user of a specific electronic device. DRM also refers to a complex hierarchy of rights management methodologies and/or schemes housed in or associated with software configuration functions and/or data access, and/or data and image production and/or reproduction capabilities, of an electronic device, either standing alone, or associated with a network. It is commonly understood that network administrators have more in-depth access to systems for system configuration, upgrade or other related services. An administrator must step through a simple or complex identification scheme to gain this more in-depth access to the system within the DRM hierarchy for the system.
In data and/or image producing systems, including High Integrity Document (HID) systems, electronic documents are produced or stored that need to be protected from unauthorized access. Most digital data production and storage devices associate with electronically readable data or images certain other data, often referred to as metadata. This metadata generally represents a separate class of data that is included within a digital data file. The metadata may describe more fully, in some electronic form, characteristics associated with the data that is actually intended to be read. The metadata may include, but is not limited to, file properties such as, for example: a system recognized title of a document that may be different from a hard-copy title, separately ascribed to the document or file; document owner identification data; and/or document production or revision data, such as, for example, when the document may have been created, saved, edited, or printed. This metadata may not appear in the document itself when digitally reproduced on a digital display device and/or when produced as a hard-copy document. This metadata is, however, permanently associated with, and possibly automatically updated in, the electronic file which includes the document. Metadata can be printed in machine and/or human readable form on a hard-copy version of the document. DRM information that a user or user organization may desire to associate with a specific electronic file may be included with that file as a part of the associated file metadata.